South Africans are voting on Wednesday in a national election seen as their country’s most competitive in 30 years, with opinion polls suggesting the governing African National Congress party could loses its majority.
The ANC led South Africa out of apartheid’s brutal white minority rule in 1994 with Nelson Mandela as its leader.
But the party is now the target of a new generation of discontent in the country of 62 million people - half of whom are estimated to be living in poverty.
Africa’s most advanced economy has some of the world’s deepest socioeconomic problems, including one of the worst unemployment rates at 32%, with residents also facing power cuts, water shortages and violent crime.
Younger generations do not feel the same gratitude and loyalty to the ANC as many of their parents and grandparents do, for leading the successful battle for multi-racial democracy.
Voters are electing nine provincial legislatures and a new national parliament, which will then choose the country’s next president. Final results are expected by Sunday.
After winning six successive national elections, several polls have the ANC’s support at less than 50% ahead, an unprecedented drop.
If the ANC gets less than 50 per cent of the national vote it will likely have to seek one or more coalition partners to govern the country and keep its leader Cyril Ramaphosa as president. It would be the first such alliance in the 30 years since it swept to power.
However if it does lose its majority in Parliament for the first time, it’s still widely expected to hold the most seats.
The ANC won 57.5% of the vote in the last national election in 2019, its worst result to date.
Mr Ramaphosa has promised to “do better.” The ANC has asked for more time and patience.
Mr Ramaphosa is due to cast his vote in the morning in the Johannesburg township of Soweto where he was born and which was once the epicentre of the resistance to apartheid.
The opposition to the ANC in this election is fierce, but fragmented.
The two biggest opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, are not predicted to increase their vote by anything near enough to overtake the ANC.
Instead, disgruntled South Africans are moving to an array of opposition parties; more than 50 will contest the national election, many of them new.
The ANC says it is confident of retaining its majority. Mr Ramaphosa has pointed out how South Africa is a far better country now than under apartheid, when Black people were barred from voting, weren’t allowed to move around freely, had to live in certain areas and were oppressed in every way.
Memories of that era, and the defining vote that ended it in 1994, still frame much of everyday South Africa. But fewer are said to remember it as time goes on.
“This will be the seventh time that South Africans of all races, from all walks of life, from all corners of our country, will go to vote for national and provincial government,” Mr Ramaphosa said in his last speech to the country before the election. “We will once again assert the fundamental principle - that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people.”
Mr Ramaphosa outlined some of his ANC government’s polices to boost the economy, create jobs and extend social support for poor residents. The speech sparked a furious reaction from opposition parties, who accused him of breaking an electoral law that stops those in public office from using the office to promote a party.
